Fayetteville State looking for a softball coach

Please contact FSU athletic director for an interview.

 

FSU DOES need a coach, and it appears that thus far this post has been the only effort by anyone to try to secure one. Sadly, it is clearly a parent that has posted which is yet more evidence of the lack of commitment of this school, to this program, to the players. I doubt that advertising on a message board will garner the experienced college coaching that is needed though. Well, not true, then again, as there are several top-notch TB coaches on here that would be able to take the team to amazing places and who would expose players to truly rigorous practices, training, conditioning, mental preparation etc that they have never known.

There are several enormously talented, college level players on this team that have put in their time in rec, middle school, high school and travel ball. Next year there are a couple of more talented young ladies arriving to fill holes as well. With the right coaching staff, this team could own their conference with more recruitment in the areas of pitching and now catching as there are no college-level prospects heading to FSU at this moment.

Sadly, the school as well as the facilities will prevent many coaches from even applying for the job.

What those coaches will not know is that things will be changing dramatically in those areas, among many others, over the next couple of years. A group of players and parents filed a Title IX action with the US Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights several months ago, and the complaint has been accepted in full. This provides some very tangible hope that areas such as safety, equipment, facilities, training, budget, travel and schedule will be dramatically changed for the better. The violations shown were significant enough that the OCR has denied FSU the right to engage in Early Complaint Resolution (ECR) with the parties that filed. Some paid a big, big price for that piece of hope but it will be well worth it if at the end of the day players are, first and foremost, safe physically and if their spirits and dreams are not crushed, as has happened to player after player after player over the years.


But, sadly, what a potentially interested coach will see right now, at this moment, if they even go to the school out of curiosity, is the insurmountable obstacles in the way of this team in the here and now. If rumors are true, the team has no equipment to practice with any longer as someone claimed to have purchased all of the little the team had - bats, bases, the one tee, the net - and took them. The team never had a pitching machine, batting cages, or anything similar. So when they return in the fall they face coming back to a team without a coaching staff, dangerous facilities, no equipment, and a no fall schedule.

Yet, if the right coach - experienced, committed and determined with a whole lot of backbone - came in and took charge, it would change the lives of these young ladies immediately. The right coach would need to be prepared to do battle with an administration that has done their best to make this team invisible and non-competitive while watching with disinterest as players break mentally under the constant barrage of negativity and that has stood complacent while players had their dreams demolished by career ending injuries that never should have happened, could have been prevented, and were at times caused intentionally just to prove someone had the power to do whatever they wanted to anyone they wanted whenever they wanted. The same coach would need to be someone that could also take on the constant drama on the team as well as eliminate the drug use, by some and known by all, that has been created by years of lack of control and leadership. They would need to have the strength of character to withstand and control situations in which players refuse to play positions for which they were recruited and scholarshipped as this has been allowed, ongoing, for years, as well as parents who demand their child play in positions that they are not competitive in as this is the atmosphere into which they will enter. They would need to be prepared to fight for a competitive schedule, instead of standing idly by when the team is informed "you are not good enough to have a season". And they would need to be prepared to build back up self-confidence that has been shredded.

The right coach could change the worlds, the dreams, of an amazingly talented core of players and could help establish a bright future for this program.

Now, all FSU has to do is hire that one in a million person.